While you’ve seen this recently added bird mural on the Forth and Clyde canal towpath a short way from Speirs Wharf, there was a problem (for me at least) of getting there in daylight, so I had to do my usual available light trick, and even let the flash fire, just to get some early shots.
Now that we’ve done the crazy DST thing, I can get there while it’s still light, and caught the view below – still a little awkward though, as the sun was low and just off to the right, behind the subject.
My experience with film and flash in the past may have tainted my opinion, but I’d have to say I’m now fairly impressed with the result below (the pic on the right). Saturation may not be so good, but the colours and detail compare very favourably (to my eyes at least) compared to the available light version, on the left.
The one weird thing is that I set things up for a pic that leans toward contrast/sharpness, although I’ve been told these setting are not really noticeable, but have never checked.
As taken, the daylight pic was very dull, and lacked any real contrast, but responded very well to having these edited, which ended up almost matching the flash.
I would NOT have accepted the unedited version, or used it.
In fact, I find very few pics straight from the camera, and unprocessed, are acceptable.
I’ve developed a workflow, and run everything through it, almost without thinking about it.
Not every pic needs it, but many do, and look dull as delivered from the camera.
And, no, other than things like sharpness, I don’t have any post-processing set up in the camera.
I even saved RAW for a while, as ‘experts’ suggest JPG compression and in camera tweaks (e.g. colour balance) spoil the original, but, as I reported in another post, I did once try examining small areas of JPG and RAW saves, and couldn’t find any differences.
I might rerun that comparison, if I find this dullness effect persists, or becomes a problem.
Secret Scotland 